Waiting for Christopher Read Online Free

hoped her stomach would forget she’d had only a hard-boiled egg and celery for lunch. In her room, she reassured herself by looking at the new pink shirt she’d hung over her mirror.
New school
, she told herself.
New start
. She lifted the hanger, as if she might find something new in the glass underneath, too. But she didn’t. In the second before she let the shirt fall back into place, she saw what she always did: the same thick horsy body, the same pasty moon face veiled with freckles. One egg and three celery stalks, she reminded herself crossly, couldn’t be expected to make her hipless and hollow-cheeked overnight. She slipped the book into the bookcase by her bed, then stood in the doorway, looking over her mother’s shoulder at the TV.
    “What did you say?” A blond woman was talking to the same man who’d been in the hospital a moment before.
    “I said,” the man told her, “I don’t care if Sarah never gets well. As long as it means you and I can be together.”
    The woman slapped him then, and the actor reeled backward, shocked and sheepish.
    Feena wondered how they did it—made that dull, solid thud when she hit him. It sounded real. It sounded hard enough to hurt. “You’re talking about my sister,” the blond yelled. “I don’t ever want to hear you say anything like that again.”
    Fade to commercial. “Mom?” Feena took a tentative step into the living room.
    Lenore turned, resurfacing. She’d eaten or drunk most of her Sandy Mauve lip-gloss away, looked softer, prettier than when she’d left for work. She took a quick sip from the glass in her hand. “Lord, I wish I could edit out this junk. What’s up, anyway?” She glanced at Feena now, eyebrows floating a little too high, mouth tight. Feena knew that look.
Make it quick
, the look said.
You’ve got until the bleach gets the stains out
.
    “I saw this kid on the rides today.”
    “So?”
    “So I was watching him and his mom. I thought she was—”
    “Have you been shutting yourself up in the car again? For crying out loud, Feen, can’t you find some friends instead of using up my gas?”
    “Mom, what do you want me to do—go out to the highway and flag down cars? This place is not exactly crawling with potential playmates, you know.” She glanced toward the window and Ryder’s. “Unless you count preschoolers.”
    “What happens if I need to go shopping tomorrow?” Both of Lenore’s fish were trembling, indignant. “What happens if the car won’t start?”
    “Don’t cry,” a new man told the blond woman on TV. He had gray hair and a soft, startled voice. “Please, don’t cry.”
    Lenore pivoted, faced the screen. Both fish disappeared.
    “Mom, I just—”
    “Not now.” Lenore waved the back of her hand at Feena.
    “But I—”
    “Shhhhh. Later.” Another wave, smaller this time, as if she were swatting a fly off her shoulder.

three

    W ashanee Springs Regional was more and less than Feena had expected. More students, less attitude. The day after Labor Day, she found herself gliding invisibly as a ghost along the noisy low-ceilinged hallways. One student asked her where the bookstore was, and another apologized when he bumped her with his backpack, but most hardly noticed her at all. Relieved, she stopped worrying about what she was wearing, about the single pimple, blazing like a red star in the middle of her forehead.
    Last year at Edgemoor, things had been different. She’d been the youngest person in school, and school had been a lot smaller. So small that she and Denise Northrup, the dark- haired, soft-spoken girl who’d been her friend from the first day, who loved books and lived outside of town in a log cabin, were typed from the start. They were in an accelerated English class, so they were “smart.” They didn’t have the right label patch on their jeans, so they were “nerds.” Which meant that they sat with the other smart nerds in class, they ate at the smart nerd table in the